Ethnicity in the Semiotics of Ufa's Architectural Space as a Factor in Constructing the Social Identity of Residents of the Capital of Bashkiria
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2026-3-129-137
This paper analyzes the social practices of memorization and ethnicization in the contemporary architectural landscape of Bashkortostan's capital, aiming to construct a sustainable regional identity for the capital's residents and the republic's population, and to ensure their social well-being. Currently, the challenge of combining a comfortable urban environment and the preservation of historical heritage, including elements of national identity in the architectural appearance of cities and urban planning, is particularly pressing. The purpose of this study is to identify methods for leveraging the cultural and symbolic aspects of Ufa's urban architecture to imbue the city with an ethnic character. The author examines the city not only as a specifically organized space but also as a community living within it. The urban landscape functions as a dialogue between the historical center (core) and the surrounding territories (periphery), where buildings serve as symbols that shape identity and convey information. The analysis of the visualization of ethnicity is based on a semiotic approach and secondary sociological analysis. Ufa's architectural space is examined as a holistic informational and symbolic structure. The author argues that the ethnocultural specificity of Ufa, like that of any city, can be represented through a combination of images and identities. Using observational methods, zones of concentration of ethnic and historical memory symbols in Ufa's urban space are identified, along with their characteristics. The author describes the means of ethnicizing urban design, architectural images, and monumental symbols (using the monument to General M. Shaimuratov as an example), all of which indicate strategies for shaping the capital's identity. Using a semiotic approach, the author analyzes certain architectural elements of the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan within the context of its unique cultural landscape, drawing on Yuri Lotman's theory of the semiosphere and considering regional characteristics. Semiotics categorizes the city as a heterogeneous semantic space – a semiotic mechanism in which architecture serves as a “text” that stores cultural codes. In the study, the city is treated as a social phenomenon, distinguished by the system's symbols and reflecting the construction of the republic's social identity.
Keywords: architectural space, urban environment, urban landscape, memorization, identity politics, semiotics, symbol, social well-being of the population, ethnicization, ethnic color
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Issue: 3, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 3
Rubric: ANTHROPOLOGY
Pages: 129 — 137
Downloads: 6